Cut Out the Darkness | Intro

Cut Out the Darkness http://cotd.panasonic.net/
Would you like to offer solar lanterns with your personally-designed shade to people living in areas without electricity?
One in every five people in the world lives without electricity.
Did you know this fact?
Using contributed original designs, we will produce shades for solar lanterns to provide them to people living without electricity.

- Cut Out the Darkness Project
We initiated "Cut Out the Darkness Project" to promote understanding of life in areas without electricity and our efforts to offer solar lanterns to people in those areas "100 Thousand Solar Lanterns Project".
In "Cut Out the Darkness" project, we call for online entries of lantern shade designs.
We will produce lantern shades and send lanterns with those shades to people living without electricity.

- About one in every five people
Around 1.3 billion people in the world live in areas without electricity.
To light their rooms, they burn firewood, dung, or lamp oil. Smoke from such fuels, however, pollutes the air in their houses. As a result, every year 1.9 million people die from inhaling smoke. This number exceeds deaths by malaria or TB.

Collecting firewood takes a long time and destroys forests.
Absence of electricity thus causes serious social problems.